Non merci, Merce

That the best way to appreciate Merce Cunningham's Anniversary Events for Dance Umbrella is lying flat on your back on a cold stone floor is not necessarily a good thing. But at least from there the whole affair escapes its stranglehold of navel-gazing pretension.

To say anything bad about Cunningham is, in the dance world, the equivalent of spitting on the Bible in St Paul's. He is one of the pioneers of modern dance. But the Events being staged in Tate Modern's cavernous Turbine Hall are a misfire, locked in a 1970s sci-fi timewarp.

There are times when Cunningham's abstract patterns of movement are seductively hypnotic, but Events is not one of them. Anyone who's seen the Dawn French dance mickey-take will know where we are: butt-hugging Lycra, paddling arms and the kind of atonal anti-music that marks it out as deeply serious. This is Art, darling, and don't forget it.

Splitting the dancers between three inter-connected performance spaces, dominated overhead by Olafur Eliasson's giant Sun installation, the idea is for the audience to mill around, as the performers mix and match with

each other. But it's better to turn the gaze up to the ceiling mirrors. Then the green and purple Lycra ants look really, really tiny.

Until Sat, Tate Modern, Bankside SE1, tonight and Thu 8pm and

9.30pm, Fri and Sat 11pm, £16, £12 concs. Tel: 020 7887 8888. www.tate.org.uk/modern Tube: Southwark/Blackfriars

Merce Cunningham Dance Company: Anniversary Events (Dance Umbrella 2003)